’Tis. Grant Barrett in his blog is not kind. Junk etymology he calls it. Language Log tears apart the assumption that bunkum is an Irish word just because it sounds like an Irish word (that Cassidy evidently made up!).

When etymology is connected with any sort of nationalism (a vast Imperial conspiracy by HL Mencken, the OED and others to deny the Irish their rightful place in American slang etymology), there can only be bad scholarship.

I don’t know how to explain this, but there exist people who read only to enjoy a book. I include myself among them. Nevertheless, thank you for your kind words of kindness.

So do I, Thews. I once made a positive comment some years ago about Bill Bryson’s history of the English Language. I had to run and duck for cover. But that experience taught me how to read with suspicion breezy and fun-to-read stuff (not that good scholarship needs to be dry and stuffy—Dave Wilton’s book isn’t so)

I don’t know how to explain this, but there exist people who read only to enjoy a book. I include myself among them. Nevertheless, thank you for your kind words of kindness.

But no one enjoys being made ignorant. If a book is labeled as nonfiction, one expects it to be true. Part of the enjoyment of nonfiction is learning and if the facts one is learning are wrong, then the enjoyment is marred. If the nonfiction work is bad enough, then one can read it for amusement, but for this one must know that it is bad in the first place.

There are lots of factually correct books on slang and word origins that are absolute joys to read. You can check the Popular Press section of the Resources section of the Wordorigins site for some of them.

Has anybody here read the book in question, or a significant part of it?

I am familiar with several of Cassidy’s etymological assertions. Some seem superficially plausible, others utterly implausible, others I can’t judge at all because of ignorance of Gaelic. Even the more plausible of the ones I’ve seen are only unsubstantiated stories, and presumably heavily biased.

But maybe the book is entertaining. And maybe some of the etymology stories have some merit. If I can find a copy at the library or bookstore I’ll take a look. If anybody here has read the book, I would appreciate an overall impression, in terms of whether there is any substance there at all and in terms of whether the book is an entertaining read.

There is a question about the lack of Celtic roots in English words. One would expect that Celtic languages would be one of the major sources for English words, but there are amazingly few in the OED and other etymological sources. Did the Anglo-Saxons really resist borrowing from Celtic sources when they overran Britain, or does the lack reflect an anti-Celtic bias among 19th century etymologists (carried unwittingly forward through to today)?

I’d like to read a good discussion on this topic. I don’t, however, hold out hope that Cassidy will contribute anything of worth to the discussion.